Geek culture, news and reviews

Five For Friday

A weekly list post based around a random theme: exploring such diverse topics as sci-fi, music, video games and movies – with the odd overview of all things geek culture thrown in. Five For Friday is your clear signal that it’s time to enjoy a geeky weekend, so happy reading!

This week’s Five For Friday: virtual vistas, unspoiled plains and views to explore from the comfort of your own home.

I read an interesting article on the Guardian this week – a strong reaction to some British business type’s claim that all games are made by spotty nerds, lack “artistic flair” and won’t do the UK industry any favours. His generally being hugely mistaken aside, that middle bit for was an especially incorrect assumption. There are plenty of video games out there which pack all kinds of artistic flair – from iconic soundtracks to character and story developments that wouldn’t look out of place in one of those HBO dramas that the kids seem to love so much these days.

Nowhere in gaming is true art more immediately appreciated than the graphics, and while the best visuals are derived from moments of action and interaction, in some games there’s nothing like climbing up to the top of a hill and admiring the view. This week’s games chosen in Five For Friday possess just those moments; open-world games set on planets near and far which, even during the heat of the action, may cause you just to stop, tilt up on your controller and just…wooooah.

Fallout 3 – Outside Vault 101

Okay, so we’ll start with a location that doesn’t exactly inspire a visit to the travel agents any time soon. But once your character’s made their escape from the relatively safer confines of Vault 101 at the start of the game, the view that awaits them outside is very impactful in its own right.

Look at that. Spooky, isn’t it? It’s just the beginning of a potentially horrifying adventure. Man I can’t wait for Fallout 4.

Mass Effect 2 – Ilium

The Mass Effect trilogy has more than its fair share of stunning vistas, especially when engaging in space combat. But one of the highlights for me comes from the second game when you visit Ilium to see what Liara’s up to. When you first enter the spaceport Nos Astra and start making your way through the market, the view out into the city is just amazing.

It’s one of the most striking sci-fi game views I think I’ve ever seen, just stunning, and it gives me a real thrill to imagine it happening somewhere out there.

Mirror’s Edge – the city skyline

In what’s already a fantastic game, the views were what really grabbed me the most in Mirror’s Edge, just the rush of getting out onto the rooftop and seeing this gorgeous blueness before you.

At the time, all games were about running through murky environs with your fellow soldiers or gang members to perpetrate whatever ‘gritty realism’ was involved in the story, but this rush of stunning colours was the perfect antidote. Hopefully the recently-announced follow up will be just as refreshing!

Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture – just about everywhere

This game was name-checked in that Guardian article as a token of that British artistic flair, and after finishing it myself earlier this week, I’ve got to agree – there’s so much of this interactive mystery that I just had to stop and stare at. The trails of light, the sound design and most of all, that beautiful Shropshire countryside – particularly at night, but showing a glimpse of that might just be a bit of a spoiler.

from PS Blog

For the purposes of this list, the best thing about Rapture is that I can’t even pick out one single view to call – most of the exterior is simply stunning to look at, and the interiors so well-detailed that estate agents should hire developers The Chinese Room to furnish their virtual show homes in future.

Minecraft – your own creation

To finish off, there’s nothing more creatively impressive than building your very own virtual view for the neighbours to get jealous of – and in the gaming phenomenon that is Minecraft this can very easily be done. But it, and games in general, can do so much more.

St Ben’s

The writer of that Guardian piece mentioned earlier, Keith Stuart, has written before of the benefits of Minecraft allowing his autistic son to have some much-needed order and control over what must be a very trying day-to-day life by playing god with these blessed bricks. It’s a very touching article and yet more evidence that not only does gaming deserve its artistic attributes but it can do so much more to help people, as evidenced by the fine work that the likes of Special Effect perform every day.

Been a while since I did one of these, hasn’t it! Don’t worry, I’ll soon forget again.

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In the continuing series of weekend-opening list posts, this week I tackle the thorny issue of lazy musicians. Well, not lazy per se, just uncreative – with some examples proving my case even further than others.

Self-titled albums; usually the masterstroke of a band keen to add some brand equity to their breakout debut albums. Sometimes the last resort of bands who are really struggling for some inspiration and so are forced to fall back on something familiar-sounding – maybe just to make it easier to ask for in shops.

Whether it’s an act of genius or an act of madness, today I’ll be writing about five of my favourite eponymous albums.

Rage Against the Machine (1992)

Back again with the Rage boys; and theirs is by far the best example on this list of a band’s sound summed up within its name – and so the most acceptable use of a self-titled debut album. Because when your album contains such impassioned musicianship and lyrical messages, anything else than your equally incendiary name (and album cover to boot) seems pretty redundant.

I’ll mention later on a band that possesses a conviction; a need to be heard, but there are no bands out there that demand your attention, and are so vital as this one. Especially in the songs where the political rhetoric and awesome riffing go neatly together – ‘Wake Up’ would be my favourite example of this. Their debut album is, for me, the band’s boldest political statement – albeit not my favourite collection of songs.

Rancid (1993)

A typical Tuesday night round about the turn of the millennium involved going out for a bit of the old underage drinking; we’d get our pre-drinks at my friend Ben’s house, where before booting up the PS2 for some Grand Theft Auto 3, he would play this album…specifically track nine. On repeat.

Whether it was his heavy-handed way of mocking someone during various girl dramas, or just because he really liked the song, I can’t be sure. However, what did annoy me was the fact he took ages getting around to playing the rest of the album, because it’s just bloody brilliant. The debut album from Rancid is very…let’s say, spiky. Not just because of the haircuts that the band sported, but because of the brilliant realisation of their spiky attitude through Donnell Cameron’s spiky production, and the youthful but desperate songs they play. They needed this.

Weezer (1994)

Weezer’s (first) self-titled album is one of those where just scanning your way down the tracklisting would make you go “holy crap, there’s ‘Jonas’ and ‘No One Else’ and…” but while with most albums you’d be skipping a couple, on Blue you’d just end up reading back every single song because they’re ALL gold. I assume that it’s the mark of producer Ric ‘Cars’ Ocasek that sheer pop shines through on every track; the fuzzy guitars are there, as are the thumping drums, but all through the album there’s the catchy, catchy melodies, the amazing vocal harmonies and glossy production.

Example:

The fact that this isn’t even the best song on Blue tells you exactly how good Blue really is.

Weezer would go on to take the piss slightly with (to date) two more self-titled albums, but while both are distinctly lacking compared to their first, there is a band that can just about get away with releasing a second eponymous album in 2000.

Rancid (2000)

And that’s because it’s equally as vital as their first, seven years later. Over 22 tracks but under forty minutes, Rancid found that the best way to come back from an ambitious dose of ska on Life Won’t Wait was to take it back to basics; self-titled, fast and furious – the latter no more evident than on ‘Rattlesnake’, a snarling ditty reportedly squarely aimed at a former manager of the band. “You’re a rattlesnake / and you’re full of shit”. Indeed.

My personal favourite track on this song was written by the bass-vocals god that is Matt Freeman; it still baffles me to this day how live footage of the band can exist on YouTube using any other angle than staring at his bass-playing, slackjawed with wonder.

A love song to life on the road and the girl he’s giving up on for it. Beautiful stuff, tenderly sung by the gruffest man in punk rock. Don’t worry; this is by far the mellowest moment on an otherwise very intense album.

LCD Soundsystem (2005)

It starts off with that annoying brag about Daft Punk (see my witty reply here) and ends with a hauntingly beautiful piece of music called ‘Great Release’ – more than six minutes of atmospheric synth built atop two piano chords and a distant vocal from music’s biggest fan, James Murphy.

And that’s why I love this first album; LCD Soundsystem were the world’s best tribute act to music. Combining influences as far-reaching as The Beatles (‘Never as Tired as When I’m Waking Up’) and Brian Eno (‘Great Release’), Murphy’s group wore their influences on their sleeve – no, above their heads on giant placards – and managed to blend them through this post-everything tight group of talented musicians to put new spins on all kinds of generic works.

You can tell Murphy’s something of an experimental type outside of LCD – his latest project apparently involves turning data from a tennis tournament into music – and this album is their most eclectic statement of all three.

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Five For Friday continues with a look at some of video gaming’s most corporate moments. Ever wondered why Lara Croft only drinks Lucozade? Well, that’s probably not true but she got paid to pretend otherwise in the late 90s.

As you read these words I’ll be staring at paintings in Le Louvre. Or maybe fretting at the price of the lift up the Eiffel Tower. Or maybe my legs hurt from too much walking and I’m watching TV in my hotel room. Any way you slice it, I’ll be in Paris, so enjoy this brand spanking new Five For Friday while I’m gone.

Video games: for so many people an escapist dream. A chance to live vicariously through space marines, archaeologists and…erm, skateboarders. Probably the last thing you want to see when booting up a game is to be bombarded by advertising, but product placement has been an issue for decades now. Whether it’s the chance to add some brand realism to proceedings, or just a company trying to make up the shortfall of whatever budgetary black hole their game production has climbed into, we see it happening all the time.

While in some games, the ads make some semblance of sense, in others they’re out of place and altogether weird. Here are five games which went firmly latterways.

Pushover (1992)

This didn’t happen if you played it on the SNES, but us Amiga players were treated to a weird enough prelude to this classic domino puzzler; a cartoon crisps mascot known as Colin Curly dropping his treasured packet of Quavers down into an ant hill, and enlisting the help of the game’s main character to help him out.

There he is, the clumsy fool. Fortunately this bizarre intro doesn’t have too much bearing on the rest of the game, as presumably it would’ve been too difficult to remove for the SNES port. Pushover was actually a fiendishly difficult but fun game – and to be fair, I still bloody love Quavers, always have.

Cool Spot (1993)

When your soft drink starts losing ground on its competitors, what do you do? Make it taste nicer? No, just bin off the humanistic mascot and replace him with a red dot with arms and legs. Poor Fido Dido, and poor us for being subjected to a Mega Drive platformer starring a red dot as the mascot for an inferior lemon/lime drink.

Long before the days when junk food was banned during children’s TV ad breaks, they were able to create video games to promote their brand! Cool Spot was first released on the Mega Drive, which leads me to believe that they weren’t always pushing for that mature audience which Mortal Kombat would deliver them.

McDonaldLand (1992)

For beleaguered parents and their fast food-craving kids, this for me was pretty much a low.

“As a licensed product for the McDonald’s fast food franchise, the game occasionally features the various logos and characters from McDonald’s restaurant signage and television advertisements, for the purposes of plot advancement and power-ups.”

I’m unsure if we actually owned a copy of this atrocity on our Amiga during the 1990s, but I definitely played enough of it to know that…they should’ve stuck to the burgers. I’m fairly outraged that they could even get away with this stuff, but as long as it’s all happy happy nicey nicey EAT MCDONALDS jolly jolly, then nobody will have been too concerned. Why is it that the moral majority was so up in arms about violent video games being illegally sold to underage customers, but nobody bats an eyelid about selling this shit?

Zool (1992)

As another blatant product placement, Zool is fairly indefensible, with very, VERY prominent signs for Chupa Chups lollies clogging up every single screen in the game. However, at the tender age of eight I was prepared to overlook this because it was bloody fun to play.

Despite this, The Ninja From The nth Dimension was a very tough game to play. Looking back now, it appears that 1992 had a lot to answer for with three of the four games listed so far responsible for polluting my tiny mind with in-game advertising. Hell, I feel silly enough now just pressing to watch the ads on AdVenture Capitalist to gain a 2x bonus, let alone expose my much more vulnerable seven-year old mind with this filth.

Enter The Matrix (2003)

This is the only one off the list I haven’t actually played, and with good reason: you’ve seen those last two Matrix films, right? Nuff said.

But the choice of tie-in product is especially strange for the video game adaptation of the Most Unwatchable 66% Of A Trilogy Ever. When you’ve had a hard day running through virtual world and trying to stay alive against virulent agents, what do you do?

…drink Powerade? Really??? This kind of thing works much better inside the cartoonish worlds of Pushover and Zool; hell, even McDonaldLand is a feel good fun time in spirit, but this particular endorsement in this particular tone of game really just brings you out of it, doesn’t it?

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This week’s Five For Friday examines five very interesting career moves by wrestlers and mythical beasts alike. You can find previous entries in the Five For Friday series here.

To make it in the world of pro wrestling you need three things: the athletic talent, the charisma, and a unique look. Tie all these together and you’re a guaranteed star.

The Rock. Triple H. Dare I say it, John Cena. These men have it – that special combination which makes them superstars. Even two out of three ain’t bad: Mick Foley certainly had the look and the charisma, even if he was never gonna win any races. Much as it pains me to admit it, Bret Hart was an absolute god in the ring and was devoted to his character, even if he was lacking on the mic.

Whether you’ve got it or you haven’t, some people are able to use what they get to try and make it to the top of the wrestling tree.

And then there are these poor sods. Ladies and gentlemen, the Worst Wrestling Gimmicks.

Duke ‘The Dumpster’ Droese

[image: GaryColemanFan]

As Stewart from the New Generation Podcast laid out for us in a recent interview, Vince McMahon certainly loved his ‘double gimmicks’ in the WWF – wrestlers who were seen to be moonlighting in the ring because they, in kayfabe, had another job to be getting back for.

Whether it’s a comment on the number of 80s wrestlers who had to combine their real love with something that actually paid the bills, or just a weird creative genre that never really went away (The Miz, anyone? Brock Lesnar? Oh no wait, that really was a different job) – the absolute bottom of the trashcan came in the form of Duke ‘The Dumpster’ Droese.

From what I remember he was a decent enough competitor, but then again I’ve since been proved wrong about most of my childhood wrestling memories from listening to that afore-mentioned podcast and watching the relevant matches. Droese wrestled in the WWF for two years – most notably gaining some upset victories over a young Hunter Hearst Helmsley – before agreeing on a release from his contract in 1996.

Mantaur

MOO. Enough said? No? Fair enough. This might do it.

(To be fair, that’s a hell of a belly-to-belly suplex he hits.)

Mike Halac counts ECW and WWE among his career highlights, but in this guise he was pretty much doomed from the get-go. Even with all-time great booker and manager Jim Cornette in his corner, Mantaur failed to grasp gold, and only lasted about six months. It must have been the exact six months that I watched WWF because I remember this guy very clearly. If only for the make-up and the mooing.

Dean Douglas

Right guy, wrong gimmick: you might know Shane Douglas as the man who threw down the NWA World Title after winning it in a tournament, in favour of declaring himself the first ECW World Champion and spitting on wrestling tradition in one fell swoop. He was instrumental in establishing ECW as the third main player in the business…so when he turned up in the WWF dressed like this:

Douglas was a pretty talented bloke, no question, but Vince’s obsession with a double gimmick didn’t endear the education-loving snob to fans one bit, and not even in the heel heat way. Sadly he fell foul of the Kliq in 1995 and made a pretty hasty exit, but not before winning and losing the Intercontinental Title in the space of about 15 minutes thanks to some particularly dickish politicking from Shawn and Razor.

Just Joe

If you watched Sunday Night Heat during its time on Channel 4 in about 2000, you might remember ‘Joe. Just Joe’, a man whose sole purpose in the WWF was to go backstage and inform Wrestler 1 that he’d just overheard Wrestler 2 saying he was going to kick Wrestler 1’s ass, or that Diva 1 was spotted getting close with Wrestler 1’s manager, much to the annoyance of Wrestler 2. On and on this went without any real, actual point to the man. Plus, as Kevin points out in a recent episode of The Attitude Era Podcast, he wasn’t even billed correctly – going from “Joe” to “Just Joe” and back again in a matter of seconds.

Sadly for Joe, his ideas outlived his own short time in the backstage area; he’s said to have been the man who first pitched the idea of a group of wrestlers who were out to censor the WWF – which one Steven Richards would actually head up instead.

The Yeh-TAAAAAY (Yeti)

Why does this so-called Yeti look more like a mummy? If you’ve never had the misfortune of watching WCW Halloween Havoc 1995, you may be very surprised to know that this was not THE question everyone was asking that night.

No, that honour referred to the onscreen Monster Truck Match which took place atop the stadium between a debuting Giant (Paul ‘Big Show’ Wight) and the Immortal(ly lame) Hulk Hogan. At the conclusion of their epic rooftop battle, The Giant would attack Hogan and appear to fall off the roof of the stadium, to his death.

Just a few minutes later though, the Giant would show up for his World Title match against Hogan as if absolutely nothing had happened.

As for this gimmick…well, apparently he would go on to become a ninja. You know, those stealthy dudes? Yep. This bumbling shambles of a man would soon become a ninja.

Because WCW. Oh, and the reason he’s dubbed the Yeh-TAAAAAY is that the commentator couldn’t pronounce the word ‘yeti’. Simple as.

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Five For Friday is an ongoing weekly series in which I pick five of my favourite things along the same theme. Last week we took a page from High Fidelity in examining Side One, Track Ones. This week, a salute to the 9 to 5 ratrace.

There are a lot of people out there who actually do like their jobs. I’m one of them. But in the entertainment world you don’t get far by making stuff about what people find satisfying. Even in the most secure and stable of personalities, there has to be an itch to scratch.

Many people don’t like their jobs. And they are the ones who get films made about them. From record shops to offices, here are my favourite workplace films; starring quirky characters and with scripts that manage to turn the humdrum and mundane working existence into an existential crisis.

In order of release:

Clerks (1994)

Clerks was made for under $30,000 and launched the film career of its writer and director, Kevin Smith. It’s a pretty amazing story captured in full on the Clerks X DVD extras, and it inspired me to start writing many a film script before jacking it in a full ten pages later. The film itself is, of course, a fantastic comedy highlighting the plight of full-time shop monkey Dante, struggling between getting a real job and the comfortable existence he enjoys at the convenience store alongside best friend and primo antagoniser Randal.

That’s Kevin Smith. Originally he wasn’t even supposed to be (here today) in the film, but if I remember correctly he had to take this line from Jay because Jay kept messing it up and they were running out of film. That’s indie filmmaking for you, and this film in particular helped bring about a huge resurgence in low-budget straight-talking films…

Empire Records (1995)

…kind of like this one. Released just a year later for what I imagine is also not much money, Empire Records is just one of those very, VERY quotable films that anyone who’s seen it can incorporate into their daily geek language.

It starts with what appears to be an employee stealing company money and frittering it away at the casino, but ‘bad apple’ Lucas is just misunderstood for reasons that become clear later. In contrast to what I said earlier, most of the people here at Empire Records do like their jobs, but it’s very much a stopgap for some who are trying to work out what to do with their lives, too.

Oh, and also the events of the film take place on Rex Manning Day – the greatest made-up holiday ever.

It’s surprising how many of the cast are, while let’s not go mad and say they’re all A-listers, still knocking around on TV. Aside from Mizzes Tyler and Zellweger, Anthony LaPaglia (Joe) and Rory Cochrane (Lucas) went on to long-term gigs in Jerry Bruckheimer crime dramas, while Johnny Whitworth was quite recently seen in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance – the less said about that though, the better. (He does follow me on Twitter though – if only because I tweeted about Rex Manning Day a while back.)

Joe is a superb manager though, let’s not forget that.

Office Space (1999)

Office Space is the absolute go-to film for anyone who has a begrudging indifference towards their job – not so resentful of it that they are encouraged to seek alternative employment, but not so buoyed by it that they can throw themselves into the working week with wild enthusiasm.

Not unless they’re destroying office equipment, anyway; but writer-director Mike Judge has done very well in drawing from his own history in soul-destroying office jobs to come up with not only this fantastic film, but also in creating Silicon Valley, which takes a similar approach in magnifying the cracks which appear in California tech culture.

High Fidelity (2000)

I remember being unsure that this would work as a film. How wrong I was. At one point in my life, working at Championship Vinyl would’ve been my dream job, despite even its owner Rob’s near-despair at how he’d merely rattled along all those years without embracing his lot in life. His own business, a regular crowd of hip young gunslingers and the love of a good woman…who he’d managed to drive away partly because of his own reluctance to cling onto something.

Man, I love John Cusack. Between Rob Gordon, Lloyd Dobler and Martin Blank he ran the entire length of the emotional spectrum – all amazing characters and all somewhere in my own Top 5 of pretty much anything. These characters are at the same time so relatable and so distant – while I’m most inclined to identify with Rob’s love of music and Lloyd’s romantic naivety, even hitman Martin Blank offers that coldness which all of us must wish we could sometimes have to get out of a bad way of feeling.

Waiting… (2005)

Finally, this one took me a bit by surprise when I first watched it at university. I liked Ryan Reynolds well enough from Two Guys & A Girl but wasn’t too struck by the rest of the cast so gave this a miss first time around. Then when I realised the film had been misrepresented by the UK press and was, in fact, a bloody funny film, I became a big fan.

It reminds me a lot of Empire Records in that whole ensemble-cast-of-wacky-kids way, but the humour is much too filthy to draw further comparisons. I especially like John Francis Daley’s character, Mitch, who draws comparisons to Silent Bob by barely getting a word in edgeways throughout the film – though this is more due to his rude colleagues than out of habit.

I’ll be giving all of these films another watch in the near future I think, if only to remind me that even when work’s getting me down, it could be worse – I could have Milton for a colleague.

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In a new weekly post entitled ‘Five For Fridays’ I’ll be tackling a Top Five list of various items from just about anywhere – books, TV, films, music and gaming.

We’ll kick off with some good rockin’ tunes.

If you’ve seen or read High Fidelity you’ll be aware that the boys down at Championship Vinyl have a tendency to make top five lists when they’re bored. As a nice way to kick off the new series of Five For Fridays – a (hopefully) weekly top five list of my own covering all things geek – I thought I’d start by blatantly ripping off one of their very own lists.

Side One, Track One

A good album needs a great song to kick it off, to get you excited to hear the rest of the album rather than leaving you sad and confused as to what else might be ahead before you’ve even reached track two. The opening track should serve as a statement of intent; a hook to snare you in and prepare you for the rises and falls of the next few songs. So without further ado, my Top Five Side One, Track Ones (in no particular order) are:

Rage Against The Machine – Testify

I nearly, nearly went with ‘Bombtrack’ on this one because the mood it creates is much more menacing; the noodling riff that’s gentle but creeping, leading in with the drums to make the first sonic announcement of a great band’s great debut album. But ‘Testify’, kicking off Rage’s third album, is a perfect summation of where we were all at when we met again. It seems to say, yep, we’re that rock band that has that amazing guitarist who does trippy things to his gear, and there’s the drums and BOOM we’re back in the room, people.

Reuben – Cities On Fire

On the other hand, the intro Reuben’s third album is a much mellower affair than we should be used to, with a gentle guitar sequence that absolutely lulls the listener into a false sense of security, before all hell breaks loose in the first verse. ‘So fire it is / to make our dark streets clean again’ screams Jamie Lenman, almost resignedly seeing as that first quiet section didn’t work and so we’ll need some noise in here to tell what’s what.

For my life, I could not pick a favourite Reuben album out of their back catalogue. It’s fairly likely that my own separate top five, top ten even, songs by this brilliant band are split evenly across all three – and that they only made three is such a sad loss.

The Blood Brothers – Guitarmy

But when you really want to make a statement of intent on the first track, it often helps to have a song that’s thrashy, loud, fast and barely 40 seconds long. That’s what The Blood Brothers manage on the opener to ‘…Burn, Piano Island, Burn’ and it’s an absolute stormer.

At The Drive-In – Arcarsenal

Another interesting one for the first-time listener – of which there were many once the hardest-working band in the world made it to a major label release. At The Drive-In pulls out all the stops on ‘Arcarsenal’, with squalling feedback and a rather shouty vocal from Cedric Bixler.

Alkaline Trio – Private Eye

‘Stupid Kid’ was the first Trio song I heard, and as much as it intrigued me I was much happier to hear their next single, which also serves as the full-speed-ahead opening to what’s probably my favourite Trio album. I was fairly obsessed with the Alkaline Trio at one point – particularly the superb singing of Dan Andriano – and this is a great reminder of why.

The Odd Bit

During the write-up of this post I was amazed to discover two things:

Out of the five bands I’ve written about, only one of them is still going strong, and

ALL FIVE tracks selected here are from each band’s third album.

I have no idea what this could mean. But weirdly it doesn’t feel like a coincidence.